Travel, Style & Beauty Expert

Trending Tips Tuesday: Fake or Real?

I hope your week is going great! In life there are many times that we try to determine if something is real or just an appearance. From love to business, as human beings we are in the constant search for what it’s truly valuable and what it’s not. Why are we always so focused on evaluating this?

Well, there are many reasons depending of the situation: Avoid wasting time, getting scammed, trusting in the wrong person or simply avoid a broken heart… but when it comes to blogging, how much attention do we pay to this? Sometimes I wonder: Are some people ok with having a fake following as long as it looks as a they have one? If so, then how real is the blogging experience?

I came across an article that talked about how many brands grow their twitterfollowship by buying followers. I knew this existed, as most of us have received a tweet or message saying: “do you want more followers” or: “buy 10,000 for $10”, and this made think more deeply about the brand-blogger relationship.

As bloggers, many of us want brands or stores to approach us and offer us their products for review/compensation, with the purpose of getting exposure more than for the actual freebies. We trust that this “established” brand has followers that pertain to our audience, and that with the contact, we can be able to reach out to it as well. But, if a brand is buying fake or inactive followers, then how much are we actually gaining from this partnership? Same goes to brands, stores and designers, if they are reaching out to a blogger that “seems” to be active and have a social media presence, and the target audience its not there, then how much of that investment it’s actually going to bring business? The answer for both it’s ZERO!

Status People is a web app that valuates the percentage of Fake (spam, bots, few tweets or followers), Inactive (observers but don’t tweet) and Active (engaging, interacting) Twitter Followers. As you have come to know, I keep it honest and Real! I received a 1/4/95% and then I thought: well, I have never bought followers? where it’s that 1% coming from? I realized I have some people still following me who have closed their accounts and opened new ones, or who, like my cousin just gave up on tweeting, or like my brother, who has only 4 followers 🙂 So, I guess from 1-3%, as long as the percentage between Fake and Inactive is very small, then it’s not a big deal.

I invite you to check yourself and see your audience, check bloggers whose social media presence you admire and brands/stores/designers whose account allures you, and see if the buzz its Real or Fake!Remember: It’s Always a Matter of Class Not Cash!!

27 thoughts on “Trending Tips Tuesday: Fake or Real?”

I can’t believe you can pay only $10 for that many followers! I actually thought about it, because that instant popularity would drive real followers to come…however, you aren’t really gaining anything from fake accounts as they cannot retweet you, help promote your brand, etc.

Hey Britt!! thanks so much for your honesty! so greateful you opened up and shared that u actually thought about it! I was quite impressed with the amount of ppl whose accounts are not all that seem to be! check ur fave brands, sponsors and even bloggers, and you will see that u dont need that!!
xoxo

I’ve never been a tweeter. With so much muti media these days, I prefer not to blast on every social site avail unless I have to. Now people want to be followed on Instagram amd I’m like ” geez, I’m a media lame(0)” 🙂

Thanks for this post Dee! Wow, I never knew that it was for real that you can buy followers!!!?? I read about this somewhere before and it’s kinda sad, don’t you think? In fact it’s shameful. I’m eager to see how many fake percent I’m going to get :-s and worried at the same time. Not that I can afford to buy followers anyway LOL. This is such an awesome post, as expected from you 😉

Great post! I’m doing a PhD in the value of design when working with brands for social media and I came across this issue of fabricated likes and followers..unfortunately it keeps happening and brands think that they gain from it..